


Through Patience, Hope

by Innin



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon Rewrite, Character Study, F!Aragorn, F/M, First Meeting, M!Arwen, Rule 63, The Silmarillion References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-10-01 21:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20418272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Innin/pseuds/Innin
Summary: Newly come into her own, Andreth Arraen has a life-changing encounter in the valley of Imladris.





	Through Patience, Hope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FireEye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireEye/gifts).

The gardens of Imladris were awash in hemlock at dusk. Arraen wandered, as was in her name, and tried to hold back tears of frustration. 

_Newly Arraen_. 

Formerly _ Andreth_, raised so for all her life, and called so by all in Imladris, cheerfully and obliviously. She wondered if they even knew her true name, and decided to absolve many of the Elves - many of them her friends - of guilt. Perhaps they had not known that it was not mere charity that had admitted her mother Gilraen - and herself, then still a toddler - into Imladris after her father's death at the hands of a roving orc band, a flight through the dark, and finally refuge. She would prefer for it to be so. 

She had grown up in the hall of fire, listening to songs of old, and never known that when she learned to sing them, she had been singing about her own ancestors. She was the last scion of Westernesse, and she was promised already, by no choice of her own, to her kinsman Halbarad, whom she had never met, to preserve the bloodline in purity, named for the virtue of Long-Mood: Patience, quiet suffering, and perhaps through it, wisdom.

Her mother had known. Must have known. Elrond - a father to her, or as close to a father as she had ever known - had known. Had planned it all. He had opened up to her, saying that it had been to keep her safe, to keep whispers of her survival from spreading to enemy ears, and nip the nascent survival of the line of Elendil in the bud before she ever reached adulthood. He had also told her that it was a reason to rejoice, but she felt like nothing short of a breeding mare and could not help resentment boiling up dark and bitter within her.

Arraen kicked a rock, and sent it spinning into the bushes. 

She had climbed heedlessly, almost to the line of pine trees that cloaked the upper reaches of the valley. Not even Elladanel and Elrohiril were to be found. They had recently returned from the wilds with their brother, who was so often - and so long - in the land of his mother's kin, Lothlórien, that she had heard talk of him and his heroics as marchwarden on the shores along the river Anduin, nearest to Dol Guldur, and left her yearning to explore the unexplored lands, but she had never met him to his face. She wondered, briefly, if her name - her true name, her new name - that lay sharp like a cordial on her tongue - was behind her desire, if her mother had been true-sighted in naming her thus. 

Not that it mattered. She was barred from the famous exploits that would put her name in history, and had almost surrendered herself to being one of the nameless, faceless human wives and mothers that never gained glory. For all the fabled memory of the Elves, and the few names inscribed on dusty parchment, there was little else than that, no imprint of themselves, unless it were of their infamy.

Perhaps she had always known that she would at last be one of them, but it had never seemed as pressing as it was now. She wanted a husband and a family, had always wanted what her mother had not had, but never like this. 

She wished now that she had taken the twin sisters' offers of teaching her woodcraft rather than listening to the voices of reason, that it was not meet for a maiden of her age, and that her mother, herself one of the Rangers of the North, would pass on her knowledge in due time. She wondered if there was any point in asking if that time was now that she had come into her own, with - perhaps - some authority to claim it.

In her aimless walking through the trees, she had come to a still pool, one of the sources of the tributaries of the Bruinen trickling down from the lip of a dell, but leaving the pool itself almost without ripple. Hemlock grew on its banks, also, but the trees receded for the view of a dark, clear, starry sky. Eärendil already sailed there, and below at the houses, the soft even-songs of star-rise were being sung. It was as good a place of rest of any, and the blank water was beautiful. 

Contemplation of the serene scenery was a welcome reprieve to her jumbled mind. She watched the trees, hoping to see deer or perhaps foxes, but instead a glint of white in the dark there caught her attention. She tracked it with her eyes, finding in the end that it must be someone clad in silver and white, a billowing cloak or a dress, not merely a shaking of the hemlock in a breath of wind. 

She was not afraid. There was no reason for it as long as she did not stray out into the High Moor, where Elrond's power faded. No evil thing could enter the valley without rousing an alarm. It had been, in the War of the Elves and Sauron, been established as a refuge and a garrison for a reason, and had never been taken for the same. 

The figure moved in a dancing gait, swaying to the soft sounds of the music from below in the valley, then suddenly, when the song reached its peak, swiftly, whirling like a moth in the night air, then landing soft as one alighting on a night-blooming flower. 

Arraen was enthralled. She had forgotten about her predicament faced with the stranger, and was almost disappointed when the songs, as on a signal, faded into quiet. She strained her eyes for the figure, who had halted in between the trees and, she thought, was facing her way now. She even thought she could see a mouth curve into an amused smile, and felt her heart flutter in response.

The stranger stepped from between the trees, pausing in a riot of hemlock flowers, and only then Arraen recognized, in the little light that dusk still left her, that it was not a woman at all. Tall and slender, and radiant of face, but a man, whose dark hair flowed unbound around his face and over his shoulders, halfway down his back, studded in white gems like stars, his tunic and cloak white, edged with, she thought, the golden leaves of Lothlórien, yet he was no Nando of that land. There was a light from beyond the world in his eyes as he regarded her, and she could feel the power in it reaching out and enthralling her from the lakeshore to his side. 

What part of her mind had not been entranced by his could not help think: Thingol and Melian. Beren and Lúthien. Aegnor and Andreth. Arraen and, she had no doubt now, seeing his face, Undómion, son of Elrond.

He laid her hand in his, and turning back to the lake she saw them both wandering there, and when they paused, they stood crowned in seven stars.

_Perhaps_, said a voice in Arraen's beating heart. _Perhaps through patience there shall be hope._ And she rose to kiss him, although they had spoken no word yet.


End file.
